A spokesperson for the Taliban’s Ministry of Interior has announced that the cultivation and production of narcotics in Afghanistan have \u201calmost reached zero,\u201d with the administration now primarily focused on preventing the smuggling of industrial drugs from neighboring countries. Mufti Abdul Matin Qaneh told the Pajhwok News Agency that this achievement was the result of implementing a four-year strategy.<\/p>\n
Referring to Afghanistan’s past, he said the country was once known as a center for drug production and processing, and claimed that, in addition to internal corruption, \u201cexternal factors\u201d were involved in transporting drugs via airports and other routes. According to him, following an order from the Taliban leader, combating opium poppy cultivation was prioritized, and operations have been continuously carried out nationwide.<\/p>\n
Qaneh added that in every area where operations take place, lands are registered and monitored to prevent replanting. He admitted that limited instances of opium poppy cultivation had been observed in some remote provinces, but said these cases were identified and eradicated.<\/p>\n
These claims come two days after the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) reported that opium poppy cultivation and production in Afghanistan have declined by about 95 percent in recent years; a figure that, while showing significant reduction, differs from the claim of reaching \u201czero.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Ministry of Interior spokesperson further stated that in the past four years, around 10,000 tons of various narcotics have been seized and destroyed, and nearly 2,500 drug production and processing factories, including those for industrial drugs, have been demolished and burned.<\/p>\n
In another part of his remarks, he announced the treatment of 74,000 addicts, saying these individuals had reentered society after completing their rehabilitation programs. According to him, special budgets have been allocated for drug control initiatives and addiction treatment, and alongside health services, religious education and technical skills training are also provided at treatment centers.<\/p>\n
However, Qaneh identified industrial drug trafficking as the main current challenge. He claimed that in some neighboring countries, including Pakistan’s Balochistan province, active industrial drug production and processing centers exist, and these drugs are then smuggled into Afghanistan.<\/p>\n
He urged the United Nations to pursue this issue at the international level, stating that Afghanistan suffers heavily from the influx of industrial drugs. These remarks come amid ongoing accusations by the Taliban administration against neighboring countries for involvement in drug trafficking, although no detailed, independently verifiable evidence has been publicly released.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Taliban claim opium cultivation in Afghanistan is nearly zero, focusing on combating industrial drug trafficking from neighboring countries.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":16436,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16437","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-important-news","category-security-incidents"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16437","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16437"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16437\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16436"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}